


Dreams of Battle

by JulianGreystoke



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Bad Dreams, F/M, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot, Short, War Dreams, friends - Freeform, kiss, li - Freeform, more than friends, small moment, why isn't Bao-Dur romanceable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5653840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulianGreystoke/pseuds/JulianGreystoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Exile, Battle Smith, doesn't have anyone on the Ebon Hawk she can really talk to, except her fellow soldier Bao-Dur.  When bad dreams drive the two of them together one night, will they be able to help one another see past the memories, and maybe find something more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Been playing through Kotor2 for the first time (I've played the first one loads, but finally got the second on Steam for Christmas). It seems that whatever I play these days fanfic inevitably follows.

Dreams of Battle

She could all but smell the smoke. It had that special, acrid twang of burned flesh and hair. Her hand stung with the added heat that could only come from a saber. Her saber. Cutting a swath through enemy ranks. She couldn't see their faces, but there hadn't been any to see. The enemy wore helmets. Jedi didn't. It was almost as though The Order wanted their eyes to be the last thing the dying Mandalorians saw. Her eyes, deep brown, full of deadly purpose. Her skin, the color of of the soil back home, stained irrevocably with blood. Her honor tattered beyond recognition. Somewhere someone she knew cried out. She turned, saw his face for seconds, and then it was gone. Lost in an explosion that knocked her flat. One of her sabers rolled from her hand, deactivating with a hiss.

She turned on her hip, made a mad scrabble for the fallen object in the dirt and gore, and fell out of bed.

“Ouch,” Battle moaned as she sat up and almost cracked her head on her bunk, which was above her now. A small light in a wall recess flipped on, sensing motion. She grunted and scooted out from under her bunk, leaning her back against the wall, cool metal against the skin of her shoulder blades. She hadn't had a dream of the war in some time. Her nights were usually filled with formless darkness these days. But now that The Force was worming its way back into her life, perhaps so would her dreams. She wasn't certain how she felt about that.

Something clanked from down the hall. She sat still, listening, unaware that she also reached out with her mind, ever so tentatively. It wasn't the droid, T3. He often worked while the others slept so as not to be under foot. Battle stood up, wincing as the hip she had landed on gave a little twinge. She knew who it was, even if she wasn't certain how.

She made her way down the dimly lit hallway and stopped in a doorway, leaning against the bulkhead. Bao-Dur was arms deep in a project. Already the front of his shirt and his chin were spattered with grease. He had an old droid chassis open before him where he knelt. He'd picked it up on the last planet they had visited. Both of them knew the little fellow would never run again, but they couldn't resist tinkering. Battle moved silently into the room. She didn't attempt to stealth. He was preoccupied and she had never been much good at it anyway. She went over to the workbench against the wall and selected a wrench she knew he would need soon enough. Then she settled back against the tool bench and waited.

He took forever to turn around, and she was beginning to wonder if waiting was worth it for the surprise. Her knee started to stiffen as she stood. Gratifyingly, his golden eyes went wide when he saw her, holding the very tool he had turned to fetch. Then he smiled. It was a tired smile, one she knew she must be wearing herself. It was, after all, the 'middle of the night' according to the ship's clocks. “General,” he dipped his head in a slight acknowledgment of the rank that only he still upheld. She almost chuckled to think of what any of the other members of their motley band might say if she requested they use her military title. “What are you doing up so late?” Bao moved towards her, hand outstretched for the spanner she held.

“I could ask you the same thing. You'd have time in the morning to work on the droid.” She handed him the tool and planted her own hands on her hips.

“I... couldn't sleep.”

“Bad dreams?” she guessed, trying to read his expression as she turned from her, back towards the gutted droid.

He chuckled dryly. “You could say that.” His voice was always so soft, so gentle. Before she had urged her crew to get some rest Bao had been in a verbal confrontation with their newest addition. The Mandalorian leader who had all but invited himself onto the ship. Battle had known things would get heated, but even when Mandalor had raised his voice, gesticulating fiercely as he argued, Bao had remained soft spoken. His words were intelligent, edged with bitterness, but not loud. Not filled with the rage she thought he had every right to feel.

“So what did you dream of?” Battle asked, watching the well defined muscles of his shoulders work while he tinkered.

“You first,” he shot a playful glance over his shoulder at her which made her feel a little, breathless rush she wasn't expecting.

“The war,” she answered him without hesitation. “The ground battle. I nearly got myself blown up about a hundred times.”

“I actually did,” he turned to her more fully, still playful as he wagged what remained of his arm towards her. He hadn't turned on the energy prosthesis he had made for himself. His limb ended mid bicep and his sleeve was folded up and pinned neatly. These days he didn't bother activating his prosthetic around her. A good sign, she assumed, of his growing comfort in her presence.

“So,” Battle cocked a hip and an eyebrow to match, “what about you?”

“Mine was of the fight in space,” he replied. He pivoted and sat down on the floor, his back to the wall, stretching one leg before him and tucking the other one under it. His expression had become thoughtful, distant. “I dreamed of Malachor. I remember the ships. The last stand of the republic.” he looked down at his hand which rested against his thigh. Battle wished he would look back up at her as he continued, his voice even quieter, huskier than usual. “The tattered remnants of our fleet. The largest we could gather. But it was damaged, weakened, and vulnerable. The Mandalorians couldn't resist, they tore into us like beasts. Shredding our ships to scrap.”

Battle could almost see it playing out before her eyes. She, on the bridge of a cruiser, commanding the fleet. What was left of the fleet, anyway. It had seemed that she would no sooner shout an order than the ships she had been commanding would fall off the censors, dead in seconds. She blinked, dislodging the memory and looked across at Bao, realizing only then that her posture had changed, she was standing straighter, like the military leader she had been on the day he described.

“This time there were no reinforcements for either side,” Bao went on, his expression lost in memory. Revan had been delayed out-system by Mandalorian scout ships. By the time she arrived, it was too late, and on Malachor there were no more Mandalorians left to die.” he looked up, met her eyes for the first time in what seemed like hours. Battle felt caught by his look for a long moment. Intense, searching. “I remember standing on the bridge with you and watching the destruction of the republic. Watching ships full of soldiers and Jedi burn and die,” he paused, as if trying to read her face. Battle struggled to keep her expression neutral. As though his words were not conjuring up memories so vivid she might have still been living them. Her hand almost strayed to her hip for a saber she wasn't wearing.

A little twitch pulled the corner of Bao's full lips, “I remember the look you had when you turned to me. It was the longest you'd ever looked at me.” Was he...blushing? Did Zabrak blush? His face had flushed a bit, that much was certain. Then his expression hardened again as the memory turned dark once more. “You didn't say anything. Just a nod. Events moved quickly then, even in my dreams. Flashes, explosions, you. Falling. I could feel the pain around me. And then the memory; the drifting hulks of the Mandalorian ships, the dead, allies friends...strangers. And then the echo. Lingering. The sound I awakened to in my nightmares.”

Suddenly Battle felt as if there was too much space between them. Miles even. She crossed leagues in a few steps and slid down the wall to sit beside him, folding up her legs as she went. His shoulder leaned against hers as if it had always belonged there. As if it were made to rest just so. He had grown so much easier with her in their travels. At first he had been still, soldierly, apologetic for every small mistake. These days she and Bao gravitated together because they seemed to be the only two on the whole ship who knew who the other was, for certain. She understood him, he her. Whatever had intervened in the years since the war had only found them drifting back together. Everyone else on the Ebon Hawk was a stranger, to be treated with caution. Battle hoped she provided her friend the same stability he was lending her.

Bao took a deep breath, as though preparing to dive into icy water. She raised her head, her black hair falling, as it always did, over her right eye. She studied his face in profile as he spoke. “I know you blame yourself for what happened,” he said tightly. “But you realize that unless action was taken the fleet would be destroyed, the Republic would fall. None of us realized the magnitude of what we unleashed.”

“No. I suppose not,” Battle sighed, tucking up her legs and wrapped her arms around them. She could feel Bao's warmth beside her. Steady. Protective. She hated the way the other men tripped over one another to 'protect' her. Bao was at her side with silent support, never rushing in to take a blow for her when she didn't need it. Not fretting every time she stepped off the ship without him. “I wish I knew what was coming. Everyone's so vague. What happened to separate me from The Force? Will my powers fully return?”

“The general I knew hardly needed her powers,” Bao pointed out. “I saw you fight, from a distance at least. I was operating a mech at the time. You used your sabers, but seldom reached for the Force to attack. You healed and shielded your men.”

“Much good it did.”

“For them it did all the good in the world,” he said, so earnestly it might have broken her heart.

“You make me seem like such a goody-goody,” she said, trying to sound annoyed, to cover.

“Well, I also saw you chop three men in half with a single swing two days ago. Is that better?”

“Much,” she said, smiling. Then, without thinking, she planted a kiss on the hollow of his cheek. He stiffed, sitting up very straight. Battle blushed and drew back. “I-er...I had better,” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder towards the door. “I'm sleepy. Good talk.” She stood, crossing the room swiftly.

~~~~

Her lips were warm against his skin and it sent a rush through him that he had never guessed, never hoped, he would be allowed to feel. He didn't have a clue how to react. She was standing up, muttering, uncertain, but all he saw the warrior goddess he had seen that day on the bridge. A simple nod was all the order she had needed to give him then. A brush of her lips was all it took to reduce him to jelly now. She was leaving, moving towards the door. He hadn't twitched a finger.

He stood with what seemed like impossible slowness, bracing his hand against the wall, watching her. She stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by the dim light of the corridor beyond. He didn't want her to go. He didn't know how to make her stay. “Battle,” his voice was raspy, like he'd been wandering a desert of days.

She turned. Gods, her eyes could hold him in place like nothing else. Still, he wasn't certain what they meant for him as they seemed to cut into his soul itself. She was moving back towards him, three strides and she was in front of him. Almost his same height. He reached up and cupped her jaw with his hand, feeling at once excited and deeply out of line. Soldiers did NOT touch the faces of their commanding officers. Then her hands reached up and were touching his jaw too, and she stood up a bit taller to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope all three Bao-Dur fans who still exists enjoyed the story! :) Just a fluffy little one-shot to get out my feels as I try to talk to Bao over and over and he's out of dialogue. *Flails* It's 'Calibrations' all over again! Anyway, he's a dear and I love him to bits. And so does Battle ;) ;) Just don't tell Atton.


End file.
